Pumpkin Guts
by Nymph Du Pave
Summary: Slash: CLex. Halloween fic. Clark wants to carve a pumpkin with Lex but things veer off course a bit. One-shot story. Please R&R :)


TITLE: Pumpkin Guts   
AUTHOR: Nymph Du Pave   
FANDOM: Smallville   
PAIRING: Lex Luthor/Clark Kent   
RATING: PG-13   
SUMMARY: Clark tries to get Lex to carve a pumpkin for Halloween and it sort of goes in another direction. Lol.   
DISCLAIMER: The WB, DC Comics, MillarGoughInk, Tolin, Robbins, and Davola [along with whomever else] own this wonderful show. I am merely borrowing the characters to use in my own evil ways and will try to return them as mentally cognizant and stable as when I took them [with the exception of the incredibly handsome and elegant Michael Rosenbaum of whom I might never let go ;)], but I can't make any promises. The Muse controls these fingers.   
AUTHOR'S NOTE and Warning: Halloween. I wanted to do something haywire and frantic and scary and, well this is so completely mush that I think my muse sent the words to spite me. This is SAP people. No other word could describe it better. Sap, mush, flooey love-stuff. And some fun mess.   
FEEDBACK: I want to thank everyone for the reviews of _Flight to Neverland_ and your emails about the site. They make me so happy and excited. I guess that excitement just never goes away. And that's such a great thing. Please, tell me what you think of this one. It feels all weird to me.   
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com 

* * *

**Pumpkin Guts**   
**by Nymph Du Pave**

It was seven o'clock and Clark was very, very late. On a normal day he would have just dropped off the orders in his immediate after school hours, but today he'd said that he'd gotten tied down with his parents. 

Lex watched as Clark brought in the final load of the produce. Usually, the it only took four trips for him to unload everything Lex had ordered, but today the kid had gone out for one more. Now, as Lex watched Clark walk back into his kitchen, he understood just why. 

Lex leaned up against the island, covered in smooth cobalt ceramic tile, and put his glass of wine down. "I don't think I ordered an organic pumpkin, Clark." He crossed his arms and watched as his best friend put the pumpkin down and moved to close the door. 

"You didn't." 

Lex waited but there was nothing more. Clark, after closing and locking the kitchen door came over to stand on the other side of the island. "Wine?" 

Lex shrugged. 

"Good stuff?" he asked, his bright eyes glittering and his smile a bit mischievious. 

Lex was amused. "Want some?" 

Clark smiled and looked down at his hands, curiously not answering Lex's question. "You don't usually drink wine, Lex." 

"There are times when the object of alcohol is not to escape from reality." 

"Like New Year's or a birthday party." 

Lex grinned. "At some of the birthday parties I've been to the _only_ point of the alcohol was to get away from reality." 

Clark looked down again, shifting his weight uncomfortably, and Lex wondered what the boy had inferred from his words. "Age, Clark," he supplied. "They wanted to forget their age." 

Clark nodded, still not looking up. "My mom drinks a little on her birthdays. It's the only time she ever does. Red wine. She says it's to celebrate the fact that she's getting older which is better than the alternative." 

Lex smiled softly and looked down at his wine, white and crystal clear. "My mother used to say that. That getting older was better than the alternative." 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Clark's head jerk up. "I'm sorry, Lex. I-" 

"Shh. Please, don't apologize." He looked up. "I'm in too good a mood to hear an apology." 

Clark grinned. "Good mood. White wine. What are you celebrating?" 

"My father's temporary return to Metropolis." 

"Temporary?" Clark actually sounded more disappointed than Lex felt that the absence of his father wasn't a more profound and liberating one. 

"Yes. Three weeks." 

"What for?" 

"He didn't say. I didn't ask. But he's gone and that's all that matters." 

And there it was. A brilliant Clark smile, all white teeth and smooth lips, all directed at him. That was something to celebrate in and of itself. 

Lex took a sip of his wine, motives secret and wishful. A real celebration would be a whole bottle of his best red with Clark up in his bedroom helping to finish it off. 

He didn't bother to mention that red wine was thought of as a romantic beverage, that it was probably a _prelud_e to celebration for Martha and Jonathon more than the celebration itself. Clark thinking of his parents having a night of romance in the same house while he was there would just be more unfortunate than anything. 

And really, Lex shouldn't be thinking of sex either. He'd done so well about keeping 'it' and Clark in two opposite directions. It wasn't easy, but he could manage. After all, if he were to start insinuating he wouldn't be in complete control of where it might lead. 

Clark slapped the island, startling Lex, and grabbed the pumpkin. He slid it over to where Lex stood. 

"Pun-kin carvin' time," he said with a sharp southern accent and an amazing, southern-boy smile. 

Was Kansas considered Southern? It was dead center if anything, really. 

"Pun-kin?" Lex asked taking another sip of his wine more out of the necessity of some sort of liquid attention to his abruptly parched throat than the taste. 

"Yeah, my dad pronounces it 'pun-kin'. I think it's kinda, I don't know, cute." 

Lex raised an eyebrow at that. Jonathon? "Cute?" 

"Yup." 

More like jaw-trembling, body-shaking terrifying. "Hmm." 

Clark looked intrigued. "You don't think it's cute, I'm guessing." 

"Clark," he started, placing his wine glass back on the island. "I don't think anything about your father is 'cute'. This may come as a rather large surprise, but I'm actually quite afraid of Jonathon Kent." 

"Afraid." 

Lex just nodded and then saw the light come on inside Clark's brilliant blue-green eyes. He stood straight up. "Oh, Lex, come on. That's not my Dad. I mean, yeah, he's a little strict and he's- well…" 

Lex waited patiently. 

"Things are a little awkward when he's around you," Clark explained. 

"A little?" 

"But he would never take a shotgun to you without-" 

Lex shook his head. 

"-you know, a reason." 

"That's not what I meant, Clark." 

Clark frowned and leaned on the island. "What do you mean?" 

It would be so easy to just say it. 'I love you, Clark, and if your father was to ever figure that out, there would be no more me.' Surely, Jonathon Kent was far more observant than his slightly less so son. But as Lex looked at Clark with that boyish face, the honest interest, he thought of the intense bond they had. It was something he knew that he would miss terribly and if Clark ever recognized the true depth of Lex's feelings for him, it was something he would no longer have. 

That was something that he just would not allow. 

"Lex," Clark prompted. "What is it?" 

"Let's just say," Lex began carefully. "-that your father would not be the ideal person… I wouldn't want to be on his bad side, in other words." 

Clark cheerfully grinned and pushed himself away from the tile top. "Well, then you have nothing to fear," he said. 

_Underdog is here_, Lex's mind supplied. And, yeah, Clark was kind of like Underdog. In many, many ways. 

"You're not on my dad's bad side. He likes you now." 

Lex gave him the best 'Whatever you say, Clark' look, and Clark averted his eyes and laughed a little sheepishly. "Okay, well, he doesn't think you're Satan-spawn." 

"I am." 

"Okay, but you're not _bad_ Satan-spawn. You're like the one that… the one that got through. Or- something." 

Clark winced and Lex couldn't hold back his smile. The boy was endearing, end of story. 

"Anyway, my dad doesn't think you're pure Luthor-evil now." 

"You're father," Lex started gently. "Will never like me." He held up his hand to ward off the inevitable protest. "And he's not a bad man for it. He's just protecting his loved one, Clark. His loved one that he's lucky came into his life at all. Adopted children are rarely as wonderfully baggage free as you are-" 

And there was the mysterious 'Yeah, right, you don't know the half of it' look. He quieted. He'd seen the look a multiple of times. The first and most prominent in his memory was when he'd been speaking about his life before and during the meteor shower. Clark had apologized to him as if the fact that he'd been scared shitless and hairless, as if the fact that his emotionally challenged father back away from him, as if his whole miserable childhood had been Clark's own fault. And when Lex made a comment to the otherwise, that was it. The look. 

He wondered just what baggage Clark was hiding, but had already promised himself that he would not pry. Clark would someday learn that not everything his parents said was law and he would tell Lex his secrets and Lex would keep them and it would all be okay. 

"He's just itchy around you, that's all." 

He shook his head. "And it's fine. I would protect you from me if you were my son." 

Clark gave him a lopsided grin. "And wouldn't that be a frightening thought." 

Lex smiled. "I just know all about being lucky that you're even in my life." Clark seemed to stop breathing and he suddenly knew why. Had he actually uttered those words? He tried to swallow over the large egg stuck in his throat. "I mean, I-" 

"No." Clark's hand on his shut him up and his heart raced. He looked up into Clark's eyes to find them intense and… happy. 

"Just leave it, Lex. I understand. I'm lucky to have you, too." 

'It's not the same' he wanted to say. He suddenly felt like pitching his wineglass aside in frustration. Here was another intimate touch and, because Lex had never known friendship, his heart - his poor, underused heart - was mistaking every honest gesture of Clark's for something more sensual. 

But his hand stayed still, afraid to budge for the loss of contact was too great a punishment. "You don't have your own personal savior," he joked. 

Clark smiled a strange and meaningful smile, but the meaning was as foreign to Lex as his missing, metal paperweight had been to the scientists that had studied it. 

"Why don't you share your wine and in return, I'll teach you how to carve this." 

He thumped the pumpkin on it's rather large pumpkin head and looked at Lex who was stunned but hid it well. Here was Clark asking for alcohol; he'd always declined previous offers and Lex had learned in the last two months not to offer with a serious tone. 

"Sure," he nodded and smiled. He wasn't about to inquire as to Clark's sudden wish to intake Lex's spirits. He didn't want to scare the boy off. "The wine's in the study." 

Clark winced. "This is a little messy for the study." 

Lex shrugged. "Well, because it's just a bit chilly out I can have Sam start a fire in the den. It's got a marble floor." 

Clark laughed. "Can't do anything like a normal person, can you?" 

Lex feigned offense. "And why should I? I am a Luthor after all. Rich and shunned and far from normal." 

"Out of touch with the common folk." 

"Exactly. Where would your common folk carve a pumpkin?" 

"In here," Clark muttered then bit his lip. "But I really like the thought of the fireplace." 

Lex did, too. It was more intimate, more romantic. Not like that really mattered. "The den it is." 

+_+_+_+_+ 

Newspaper was spread below them and the fire had been attended to minutes before by a very quick, very discreet Samuel Loomis. It was more than an hour after Clark had arrived, and Lex was more than a bit tipsy. He'd had four or five glasses of wine and was fully relaxed. 

It was always easy to relax around Clark. Sexy Clark. 

"It's amazing," Clark murmured, watching as Lex pulled another tiny handfull of the pumpkin guts out. They were almost through emptying it. "I taught more people than I can remember how to carve a pumpkin two years ago at the Halloween fair. The seven year olds were cleaner at the end of this than you are now." 

Lex laughed. His stomach was aching from all the laughing he had been doing. 

"And the teeny-bopper, Britney Spears wannabes were less prissy." 

"Prissy?" Lex asked. 

"Yes," Clark said firmly with a smile. "And less drunk." 

Lex shook one gooey finger in front of Clark. "I, young youth-" 

Clark raised his eyebrows at that. 

"-are not drunk." 

Clark laughed. "That's good to hear." 

Lex frowned and picked up the bottle. "How much of this did you have?" 

"I'm on my second now." 

"Liar." 

"Honest." 

"But it's almost empty and I smell it on your breath." 

"That's _your_ breath." 

"Oh, dear." He said in a quiet British accent. "I'm afraid I might be a bit pissed." 

Clark sighed and surveyed the mess. "I guess we'll just have to leave the carving for tomorrow. There's no way I'm trusting you with the knives." 

He knew that was supposed to be an insult or a joke or something but at just the mention of tomorrow, Lex's stomach dropped. Sure, Clark coming over on a Saturday was as rare as it was wonderful, but that meant he needed to leave now. And Lex didn't want that. 

"Then you do it," he said. 

"What?" 

"I want you to stay." That had sounded far too desperate for even his drunken ears. "Oh, uh-" he sputtered. "I mean, it's not that- It's just-" 

"I'll carve it." 

Lex looked up, surprised. "What?" 

Clark shrugged and looked down at the Exacto knives. "I want to stay," he said in an undertone. 

Lex's stomach felt warm and his face flushed. Clark wanted to stay. And now those blue-green eyes that he wished would see him in a different light were looking at him. And not looking away. At all. The air was suddenly electric and parts of his body that had never before tingled were on fire. Did this whole thing mean that Clark wanted what Lex wanted? Was there really something there after all? Could they have a future together. 

Destiny? 

He looked to the silver mixing bowl that held the pumpkin mush, breaking the eye lock with Clark. This was why he hated being drunk. He wasn't in control of his feelings the way that he should be. Soon, if not very soon, he wouldn't be in control of his actions and he would say or do something stupid that could push Clark out of his life forever. And he loved Clark. He really did. He'd recognized it the last time he'd been drunk, far too late for a man as smart and as observant as he was, but there it was. Love. Not just lust or a crush or an obsession -- or at least as much as being in love is not an obsession. This was true heart-softening, soul-inspiring, life-altering love, and this was the truest of the true unrequiteds. 

Of, course, he'd realized his feelings for Clark when he'd let his guard down and that only happened because he'd been trashed. After the bright and very sudden insight, he'd climbed into his _new_ little silver Porsche and made it halfway to Clark's house. He was going to tell the kid just how he felt when it dawned on him that Clark would be very nonplused if he showed up drunk and with a car. So he'd headed back only to drop off the car. Then he was going to walk to the Kent farm. 

It was a lucky thing that Sam had found him before he'd taken off again. Of course, anti-sobriety Lex had revealed everything to the older man, the whole story along with background notes and incidents leading up to his drunken comprehension. Sam was one person he could trust, however, and it had never been mentioned. 

Clark was drawing shapes onto the pumpkin with a Sharpie. He was so cute, his face a study in creative concentration. Teeth indenting lips, sweet little mysterious smile. Eyes bright and cheerful. 

Lex needed to kiss someone. "Go home, Clark." 

The boy looked over at him. "What?" 

Lex tried to get up and felt back on his elbow. "Go home." 

"But I thought you wanted me to-" 

"Well, I lied," he lied. "I don't." 

Clark was silent for a minute. "You're drunk." 

It wasn't an accusatory voice, but Lex took it as one. "Yeah? And?" 

More silence. He turned to look at Clark and instead of an answer he got a face full of goo. 

"AH!" 

Clark laughed. "That's what you get for being abstruse and contradictory." 

"Ooh, big words for the delivery boy." 

More goo. 

"This stuff smells far too much like pumpkin." 

Clark laughed. "There's a reason for that. Want some more?" 

"No!" he half-shouted. 

"Then apologize." 

He cleaned enough of the seeds from his eyes to meet Clark's. "You're the one that smeared pumpkin on _me_, and _I_ have to apologize." 

Clark held up the seeds and stringy goo. 

"I'm sorry," he started. "Very, very sorry." 

Clark nodded, dumped the goo, wiped his hand on the newspaper and went back to his drawing. "That's good." 

Lex grabbed a handful of the pumpkin. "In advance," he added calmly. 

"Wha-" 

Clark's sentence was interrupted by a loud, wet smacking sound and pumpkin seeds in his mouth. 

Lex laughed. Hard. Clark's face was completely covered. "God, that was great. In your mouth, even." 

Clark spit the seeds out. "I noticed." 

Lex knew it was dirty pool, but he grabbed more of the seeds before Clark could see anything and dropped them down the farmboy's white tee. 

"Hey! Oh, you are so gonna get it." 

Lex, laughing, tried to scrambled away but marble floor has little to no purchase, especially for slippery drunks with slimy hands. Clark caught his legs and pulled him back. He flipped and straddled Lex quickly and grabbed the mixer bowl. 

"No!" shouted Lex, laughing. "Please! Uncle! I give! You win! Dead, here! Whatever, just please! Don't!" 

Clark laughed. "You mean I have a Luthor begging me to do something?" 

Lex was quiet until Clark moved the bowl over the top of his head. "YES! Yes! Begging, groveling, anything, Clark, just please-" 

"Alrighty, alrighty." Clark laughed. "Jeez, you Luthors are all bark, no bite." 

"Guilty as charged," Lex said breathing deeply. Then Clark shifter higher up on his stomach and Lex really _noticed_ that Clark was sitting on his lap. His skin crawled with goosebumps and he was suddenly hoping that Clark would get off soon. 

But the boy just sat there. "Wow. A Luthor at my mercy." 

"Indeed," Lex said, trying very hard, very, _very_ hard to not notice that there was a Clark on his lap. He could easily become a little too happy and that would suit no one. 

"Hmmm. I wonder what I should do," pondered Clark aloud. The boy shifted back a little and accidentally rubbed up against Lex's dick. 

Lex swallowed with an audible click and refuse to meet Clark's eyes. Instead he just stared at the ceiling. 

"Not many people would let an opportunity like this pass by." 

Pretty ceiling. "Nope." 

"They'd use it. No doubt." 

Pretty ceiling. "Yep." 

"Use you." 

Pretty _boy_. God, why was the thought of Clark using him so freaking hot. Especially since the whole fact that Lex loved him so much was because he _didn't_ use him. "True." 

"So why should I let it pass me by?" 

"You shouldn't." That was the truth. Oh, how much he wanted Clark to do something so unlike something Clark would do. He wanted to touch and to taste and to fondle. He wanted to grope and tell his farmboy/best-friend/savoir that he loved him, that everything humane and touching and nice inside of Clark was changing Lex and that in and of itself was a miracle, not even counting the fact that Lex was alive, the fact that Lex could love again. 

Instead he just swallowed his emotions and his heart pounded furiously in his stomach. Clark was no longer leaning back on his penis, but if he did, he'd find out just what Lex's hidden feelings were. 

"Clark, could you please use this opportunity and then get off." 

"What? Get off? Now why in the world would I do that?" 

"You're making me a little sore." 

Any other guy would have slapped Lex and said he could take it. Of course, any other guy wouldn't have necessarily been on Lex's lap in the first place. 

Clark, on the other hand, was always surprising Lex. 

"Well, then… I should make you better." 

Lex was stunned and sure he misunderstood. "Uh, really, Clark. It's nothing that-" 

"I think I should." 

Lex shut his mouth and stared up at Clark. It wasn't the words that had caught Lex's attention, but the averted eyes, red cheeks and seductive tone. 

"I want to make you better. Make it all better." 

Lex's lungs had stopped functioning, that was all. Nothing to panic about really. He felt Clark's hands on his stomach moving slowly up towards his chest. The boy bent down towards Lex, his rear firmly against Lex's growing erection. He could feel Clark's breath on his ear, then felt the lips against first his cheek then his ear. 

"Tell me what this is, Lex," Clark whispered. "Tell me what we are." 

Lex shut his eyes against the heat. His erection was hard and the marble was cool against his heated body. "I don't know, Clark, I don't know," he whispered. "I'm sure not sure of anything, haven't been since you saved me. Anything except that you mean everything to me." Clark was pulling back and Lex braved to open his eyes. Clark was staring down at him, intense and greedy. 

"This relationship has no words… I…" 

"Yes," Clark prodded gently. 

"I can't tell you what I'll be to you, Clark, I can't promise that I'll live up to what you deserve, but if you just…" 

"Yes?" 

"If you just give me a chance, I'll try my hardest for the rest of my life to be the best person that I'm capable of." His eyes were watering because he wasn't sure that it was enough for Clark, wasn't sure that he was wording it right but he knew he was trying his hardest. And when you try the hardest to say what your heart feels and it doesn't come out like you mean- there's nothing on Earth that could be worse. 

"I'm not enough for you." He felt a few tears escape and he damned the wine, the fire, the chill outside and himself. But never Clark. Never. "But I'll try until the day I die." 

"God, Lex," Clark panted and he rubbed Lex's chest. "I can't- I just wanted to kiss you. I wasn't sure what you felt and..." 

So Clark didn't want to be with him? He shut his eyes tight as a sob wracked his body, quick but violently noticeable. 

This was really it though, wasn't it? It was the way of his life. He was too emotional, too ready to fight, too willing too conquer and too needy for love. There wasn't a part of his body that didn't want Clark just for the homespun goody-two-shoes he was and, now, there wasn't a part of his body that didn't hurt because what he'd known all along was true - he didn't deserve and therefore wouldn't get. 

He had been empty before, but this was dry, barren and left to die. This was a dead, rotting sixty-nine Impala on the side of the hot, blazing desert road with a 'Love or Bust' bumper-sticker and a tumbleweed blowing by. 

He'd begun living his life again with a hope, a simple stupid hope and now reality had- 

Clark was getting off of him. "Lex, listen, I-" 

"I'm sorry, Clark," he said standing pretty well for a drunk, his tone calm, all business. He headed for the windows, not having the stomach to look at his friend. The sexy tee, the tight jeans. He was too lost and his savior was too appetizing. He would not cheapen his feelings for Clark and therefore could not let sex invade his mind. "I mistook your aspirations for those of a more pure and romantic inclination. If it was more carnal than rapture, as I conclude it was, I apologize for the mistake. However, as I've stated, you mean too much to me to-" 

"Lex, it's not like that." 

Lex looked outside for a moment then turned to face Clark. There was something abandoned-looking about the boy, hair mussed, pumpkin everywhere. They would look ridiculous to someone else, with the seeds still all over. "Then what was it?" 

"You couldn't tell?" Clark asked. "I was trying to… I guess I didn't get it across." He walked over and grabbed his jacket. 

Lex was determined to not leave this with him standing as the fool. Not again. Not this time, please, no. "I'm sorry if I don't have a mastery on the clandestine and subtle ways of Clark Kent, okay?" 

His agitated tone stopped Clark in his tracks, face closed off, ready to hear something he didn't want to. 

Lex started to pace. "But you spend all this time looking at me and smiling and touching. You tell me that I'm your best friend and we have these moments, Clark." He stopped pacing. "These moments that I can't stop thinking about all the-" 

Clark walked towards him. "You think that it's not like that for me? You think that I don't dream about you at nights and want the courage to do more than graze a hand? To have the courage to do more than please myself at night?" 

Alright, that was new. Lex figured that the wine was not just affecting him. 

Clark stopped in front of him, resolute and unabashed. "I think about you until my head hurts, until I feel like I'm going around and around. I drive myself crazy wondering why I don't just have the courage to tell you that I love you." 

Silence. They watched each other for a moment. 

"And when I do," Clark whispered, his throat sounding constricted. "You accuse me of only wanting sex." 

Now they were going in circles. It started with Lex feeling like a fool and that was apparently how it was going to keep coming around until one of them did something. There were tears, ones that he had caused, falling out of Clark's eyes, and he couldn't have that. 

He grabbed Clark's shirt and pulled him closer. "You know," he smiled. "The wanting me just for sex thing wouldn't be _that_ bad." 

Clark shook his head. He wasn't in the mood for jokes. 

"I mean, come on, we're talking sex slave here." 

Clark smiled. 

Lex stepped closer. "I'd shave my head for you, Kent." 

Clark laughed. "What?" 

"I'd do it." 

"I bet you would." 

"I hear you like them bald." The last word came out half-whisper, half-squeak because the world came crashing down, and in a oh-so-good-and-tasty way. He realized how impossible his dreams had been, how very unlikely that Clark could ever love a fucked up, bald, twenty-something baby in disguise. He was the rich man with everything and nothing. Yet, in his house and a mere three inches away were the lips of everything that could turn _this_ world into _his_ world. The only thing that could truly make him understand the word love and what it felt to be in it. 

"You love me," Lex whispered. 

"Yes. With abso-" 

His finger was against Clark's lips. "You love me." 

Clark nodded. 

"And I love you," he finished. "That's all we need. No extra words, no fluff, nothing in between. I need you and you need me." 

"Yes," Clark whispered. "I do." 

Lex smiled. "Then kiss me goodbye, farmboy. You have to get home and I have to go to bed before the hangover hits me now. I'll see you tomorrow?" 

"And everyday for the rest of my life." 

"For the rest of _our_ life."   
  
  
  
  
  
  


**FIN**


End file.
